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Thursday, October 2, 2014

Hero Builds: Jakiro

Introduction

Jakiro is a great support hero - he can push, stun, defend, and team fight. He doesn't really need items, and is decently tough, with a good starting Strength and Strength growth.

His main downside is his lengthly cast animation, meaning you might not get your ability off before you get stunned or before you die. his attack range isn't great (400), but if you target-cast his Liquid Fire instead of auto-casting it, the range increases to 600.

Jakiro Abilities:

I favour Dual Breath over the recently-nerfed Ice Path. Ice Path only does 50 damage at all levels, and has only a 1s stun at level 1. Of Jakiro's three abilities, I think Liquid Fire is the strongest laning ability, and does well for pushing towers as well.

Skirmishing (or Aggro Tri) Build:

The idea of this build is to get access to your three abilities ASAP (with a 1/1/1 build at L3), and then maximize Dual Breath for skirmishes. This build emphasizes skirmishing instead of pushing or laning.

The Laning/Pushing Build:

The idea of this build is to abuse Liquid Fire, both for harassment and pushing. The main reason to level Liquid Fire ASAP is to reduce its cooldown. It does a ridiculous amount of damage for a zero-mana-cost ability. The damage doesn't scale that rapidly (75/100/125/150), but the cooldown decreases by ~5 seconds per level (20/15/10/4). This gives you a harassment tool that scales from 225 damage per minute (225/60 = 3.75 DPS) to 2250 damage per minute (37.5 DPS). This damage output is really annoying to lane against, especially in combination with, say, Heartstopper or TideBringer...

Mid Build

I saw this done in a pro game in patch 6.81c, and Jakiro is surprisingly good at shutting down some mid heroes (especially melee ones), and forcing the tower early. I think this approach will do less well in 6.82b, since the nerfs to tower gold. However, that said, one of my pub-friends used to play Jakiro mid with great results, even several patches ago, before the buff to Liquid Fire.